TheColourOfStarlight
by TheColourOfStarlight
Summary: AU. When stars scintillate, their very colours seem to change. Like those celestial bodies, the dynamics of our own relationships are constantly shifting. And although we may not know it at the time, what we experience is comparable to the brightest star. [SoraxRoxas]


**Dear Reader: bear with me; I'm trying something new. You know how some songs in music flow seamlessly from one to the other, often with a smooth little segue? That's what I'm trying here, only with words. I've got ten shorts—or maybe one overarching romance… your call—where the last word of one story is the first word of the next. I've never seen segues like this done before in literature, so (as far as I know) I've done something new! And also, in the spirit of the segue, I will not have a "liner note" at the end of each story. Instead, they will be clumped together at the end. Thank you for tolerating my whimsies; and, more importantly, thank you for reading.**

**~TheColourOfStarlight**

-o-o-o-

**TheColourOfStarlight**

-o-o-o-

_Indigo_

-o-o-o-

…Sometimes, when he was by himself in his too-quiet apartment, Sora would think about things. Sure, when he was out in the world, he was talkative and friendly. A picture-perfect extrovert if there ever was one. But when he was alone—truly _alone_—it was like he would transform into somebody else entirely.

There was this quiet side to him that no one had ever seen before. To him, this side was the real Sora. Because when you're by yourself, you don't have to live through others. You're not "the loud one," "the smart one," or "the funny one." You just _are_, even if you're really nobody at all.

So, some nights he became a philosopher. Others, he wore the mask of a mathematician or an artist. And sometimes, he was even the walrus. But he would always occupy himself by thinking. Pondering. Often, something on television would intrigue him; or make him suddenly angry, or sad. Usually, these were things that people normally didn't expect him to think about.

Maybe that was why he never told anyone about his reflections.

They were too personal, and a little embarrassing—things that, even though everybody in the whole world struggled with them, no one else could even begin to understand. And while it was true that Sora was a bit of an airhead (he would be the first to admit it), his mind still wandered just like everybody else's.

These days, loneliness had a funny way of sneaking up behind him. He could be doing the most mundane things—laundry, or making himself another PB&J—and he would suddenly feel pangs in his chest. Maybe that was why, recently, his thoughts had begun to drift more and more towards love, to someone who could understand his Hopes and Fears.

Sora himself wasn't really sure what love was like. He knew what being in love was; of that, he was sure. But somebody being in love with him? Never. He had always been alone. Until recently, he had liked it. But now… Now he was beginning to realize that he was actually pretty lonely.

He sat on the loveseat while the television played, the light from the screen illuminating his face though the darkness. The host of whatever program was airing, Jimmy—was it Kimmel, or Fallon?—was sweating bullets as another one of his lackluster jokes bombed, but Sora paid him no heed. The light from the screen simply flickered across his eyes. Tonight, the laughter of the audience was white noise to his thoughts.

He was tired of being alone every night, of feeling so damn hollow. More than anything, he just wanted to be with someone, somebody he could fill himself with. But how do you know when you've found that person, what _was_ love? It's some kind of spark, right?—a kind of energy that you feel pass between the two of you, something special and wholly indescribable. That was what he had been told all of his life after all.

Or perhaps he'd been taught to look for something that didn't exist… Maybe you were just supposed to find someone decent and settle down, and maybe—if you were lucky—love would grow from there. The odds of finding love that way are much better, empirically speaking. But no; that was something he refused to do. Love was real, he had finally decided, and he was determined to find it.

A commercial screamed at him from the television set and jolted him back into the present. For a brief second, his heart was in his throat, but he soon began to normalize. He sighed as one ad gave way to the next, and closed his eyes sleepily as his thoughts meandered back to love.

His imagination was beginning to run away from him now; it was growing late. In his head, he was watching as his life intertwined with someone else's. It could be as simple as saying hello to someone—but he knew that, in the end, it was always so much more.

Maybe the person at the register would be a dollar or two short, so he'd step in and pay for the rest of their macchiato. The shop would be empty, so he would strike up a conversation with them. They'd hit it off, and talk the afternoon away. Or maybe he'd jump underneath someone's umbrella in the rain and find a friendly face waiting there. It would be romantic, of course, because that's the way these things worked.

He yawned as he pushed a button on the remote control and turned off the TV, casting a veil of gloom over the room. With the television set off, the silence seemed so much louder than it had before, to "thunder through the room," to use that oxymoronic cliché. It really was just him.

He cast a glance toward the outline of his bedroom door. His roommate was probably asleep already. Sora envied him; all Sora had in his heart was masks. His roommate on the other hand (for all Sora could tell) was genuinely happy. Sora frowned to himself. The dark suddenly felt very big.

He closed his eyes and, alone in the dark, dreamed about the first date he and his other half would have. He didn't know what they would do, probably have dinner. Nothing too fancy, of course; it was just the first date. Maybe the fair would be in town, and they'd hop on the Ferris wheel. The ride would stop, inevitably with them at the top. Because that's the way it's supposed to happen. Right?

With a yawn, he stood up and headed to the bathroom. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but he still stumbled blindly in the shadows before he felt his hand brush against the bathroom door. He stepped inside, flipping the light on. The bright incandescent lights on the room's sterile whites hurt his eyes.

Their first kiss, he thought, would be stolen in a dark theatre, perhaps. Or maybe out on a picnic on a warm summer day, he would be lying on his back in the grass as his date did the same. One of them would roll over, the sun warming their cheeks, and kiss the other just because it felt right.

Sora peered into the mirror with a blank look. He didn't like the face that blinked back at him. It looked tired. Well, he _was_ tired, but it wasn't just that. It was something more than physical fatigue, something deeper. He felt himself frown again (such a bad habit) as he searched for his toothbrush. He was too young for this existentialist crap…

As he watched the toothpaste squirt onto the brush, he thought about the first… morning after. He would wake up in his lover's arms. They would smile at each other, and there would be an intimacy that hadn't been there the day before, everything would change.

And then he pictured their first fight. How one of them would explode over something minor and insignificant. The state of the toilet seat seemed to be a perennial favorite of the silver screen; but maybe it would be something else, something larger and much more important.

After all the on-and-off-and-on-again, his eyes were finally adjusting to the bright lights. He grabbed onto the squeaky faucet—it was ice-cold and sent him a shiver up his arm—and he turned on the sink. The taste of toothpaste in his mouth always cheered him up a little. It was weird, and he didn't know why it did, but it just _did_.

His mind was becoming fuzzy, his brain was starting to shut down, but it didn't stop him from imagining all the breaking ups, the sadnesses, and the getting-back-together-agains that would come. Maybe there would be lots of them. They would be Ross and Rachel. Or maybe they would be together forever.

Sora flipped the light switch and drowned the room in shadow. As he slipped into his room, moving from darkness to darkness, his thoughts degenerated, lost all form. They tumbled into the recesses of his mind, intersected and intertwined into a jumbled mess of dating and loving and living. He blinked, and they were gone, only to reappear in some different form, if he remembered them at all. It might have been a different topic entirely for all he knew.

He lay in bed and thought about hugs and kisses and relationships and happiness, about dates and sex and love and lust. And he told himself that even though he hadn't exactly found it yet, he was going to keep looking for love; and as he drifted to sleep—to dream of things that his friends and family were only waiting for him to care about—he knew that, eventually, he would find it…

-o-o-o-

**2/2/2014**


End file.
